I've been thinking a lot about wicking recently, since I am just about convinced it is more important than coil surface area when it comes to flavor and vapor production.
Stay with me for a moment here.
The wick volume to heat flux, and wick efficiency are probably the most important variables.
The greatest source of heat loss in an atomizer is the phase change when your juice turns to vapor. This initially happens on the surface of a coil, but rapidly progresses to include the heated wick, as it is likely liquid juice is unable to even reach the surface of active atomizer wire (think about a drop of water coasting around on a hot skillet like a hovercraft). This volume where juice is actively being converted to vapor is larger than just the surface area of the heating coil due to radiant heat.
So what about complex coil builds like clapton coils, alien wire, fused Clapton's, etc?
I think it is mostly a red herring to be honest, though I can think of one obvious benifit vs the cons of more coil mass, and that is since the wrapping wire only receives a fraction of the current to the coil assembly, it heats slower and acts as insulation vs scorching the surface of the wick and creating bad flavors. The added mass also creates a larger area of radiant heat, facilitating the juice's phase change within the wick. When I was running clapton coils I do feel like I had a lot less scorching and caramelization when I'd rewick, and could certainly rewick less often provided I gave the coils a good oxidizing dry burn prior to wicking.
Anyhow, I had some mesh and an RDA that I thought would be suitable to set up with rolled mesh (since I don't own a genesis style atty) and a vertical coil, the Veritas.
In theory, a well rolled SS mesh wick can be rolled to provide solid contact within a coil, while still being resistant to shorts by using proper oxidization techniques during preparation. A SS mesh wick is much more conductive to heat than an organic (or silica for that matter) wick, this should increase the volume where the phase change is occurring, as well.as preventing any off flavors from scorching.
I wanted to see the effect of TC with a mesh wick, so I got out my trusty 26awg 316l SS wire, and made a mesh wick for it.
The coil is a 2mm inner diameter, 6 wrap that comes out to .48 ohms. I wrapped it using tension winding as a compressed coil, then stretched + compressed it to get basically equal coil spacing. I installed + pulse fired the coil until it was heating evenly with no hotspots.
For the wick, I took some 400 mesh, torched it to ensure it was annealed to assist with rolling a solid wick, then saturated it with juice and let it flame off three times before trimming it to width and length, torching it one more time, then carefully screwing it into the coil.
No shorts.
I pulse fired and prodded until the hotspots went away and the coil heated evenly without hotlegging.
Started filling the well with juice, watched as the wick saturated as soon as the juice hit the bottom.
In TC mode, the temperature basically controls the amount/density of vapor the atomizer produces, and cuts off abruptly when the well runs dry. Flavors are clear and crisp, and don't linger in the atomizer when you switch flavors.
I'm pretty sure I want a genesis now, do any of them actually have a reasonable amount of airflow to comfortably lung hit off of?
Stay with me for a moment here.
The wick volume to heat flux, and wick efficiency are probably the most important variables.
The greatest source of heat loss in an atomizer is the phase change when your juice turns to vapor. This initially happens on the surface of a coil, but rapidly progresses to include the heated wick, as it is likely liquid juice is unable to even reach the surface of active atomizer wire (think about a drop of water coasting around on a hot skillet like a hovercraft). This volume where juice is actively being converted to vapor is larger than just the surface area of the heating coil due to radiant heat.
So what about complex coil builds like clapton coils, alien wire, fused Clapton's, etc?
I think it is mostly a red herring to be honest, though I can think of one obvious benifit vs the cons of more coil mass, and that is since the wrapping wire only receives a fraction of the current to the coil assembly, it heats slower and acts as insulation vs scorching the surface of the wick and creating bad flavors. The added mass also creates a larger area of radiant heat, facilitating the juice's phase change within the wick. When I was running clapton coils I do feel like I had a lot less scorching and caramelization when I'd rewick, and could certainly rewick less often provided I gave the coils a good oxidizing dry burn prior to wicking.
Anyhow, I had some mesh and an RDA that I thought would be suitable to set up with rolled mesh (since I don't own a genesis style atty) and a vertical coil, the Veritas.
In theory, a well rolled SS mesh wick can be rolled to provide solid contact within a coil, while still being resistant to shorts by using proper oxidization techniques during preparation. A SS mesh wick is much more conductive to heat than an organic (or silica for that matter) wick, this should increase the volume where the phase change is occurring, as well.as preventing any off flavors from scorching.
I wanted to see the effect of TC with a mesh wick, so I got out my trusty 26awg 316l SS wire, and made a mesh wick for it.
The coil is a 2mm inner diameter, 6 wrap that comes out to .48 ohms. I wrapped it using tension winding as a compressed coil, then stretched + compressed it to get basically equal coil spacing. I installed + pulse fired the coil until it was heating evenly with no hotspots.
For the wick, I took some 400 mesh, torched it to ensure it was annealed to assist with rolling a solid wick, then saturated it with juice and let it flame off three times before trimming it to width and length, torching it one more time, then carefully screwing it into the coil.
No shorts.
I pulse fired and prodded until the hotspots went away and the coil heated evenly without hotlegging.
Started filling the well with juice, watched as the wick saturated as soon as the juice hit the bottom.
In TC mode, the temperature basically controls the amount/density of vapor the atomizer produces, and cuts off abruptly when the well runs dry. Flavors are clear and crisp, and don't linger in the atomizer when you switch flavors.
I'm pretty sure I want a genesis now, do any of them actually have a reasonable amount of airflow to comfortably lung hit off of?
